Turn 1 crash was racing incident says Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton has labelled the incident on the first corner that cost him the race as a ‘racing incident’.

Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg leapfrogged pole sitter Lewis Hamilton off the start and whilst he held track position he was also able to bog down his team-mate on the first corner, pushing him into a vulnerable position where contact was a distinct possibility.

As it happened Hamilton suffered severe damage, both to his car and his track position, following a collision with Bottas, a combination which put Hamilton out of contention for the race win.

‘Obviously I lost a lot of performance in the car, I had so much damage on the car I couldn’t keep up with Kimi. I did what I could with it, I was trying to keep the tyres. Hamilton told motorsport.com.

Hamilton didn’t lay blame on Valtteri Bottas for the incident.

‘I am not sure what happened at Turn 1, whoever was on inside was in my blind spot, I didn’t see them, but it was a racing incident.

‘It was in the blind spot, I don’t know what happened. We could keep going, and I managed to continue and still had some performance in the car.’

The Bahrain stewards didn’t agree handing the Williams driver a drive-through penalty and two penalty points.